An alternative perspective on Engage vs 3H

No intention here to start a war again, I like both games and I can see why some players have a strong preference to one of the other. I just wanted to highlight a reason some may prefer 3H that I don't see gets talked about a lot (or maybe it does and I haven't seen it - sorry).

I've seen a lot of comments that seem to think the biggest difference is how much you prioritise gameplay over story or vice versa. I get this take, as the structure of Engage much more closely resembles classic Fire Emblem, and is therefore closer to what you expect from a game if you are a long time FE fan. It's much more 'iron-man'-able because of the way new units get introduced, and the general consensus on emblems is that they are really fun to use and add a lot of variation.

I'd like to offer an alternative perspective that I don't see mentioned much however. I am a long time fire emblem fan, and I (controversially) prefer 3H gameplay over Engage. I think this is just because I prioritise different aspects of the gameplay than maybe most other FE veterans do. One of my favourite aspects of FE is being able to curate my army and grow them so they become as strong as possible by the final map. I like to choose their skills, who I make my final roster, who I divvy out the precious limited exp to. I 100% each map rather than going for LTC because of this. I make a diverse team that can handle every type of threat and I bench everyone else. This is satisfying to me. It's the same joy people get when they play pokemon and raise a team of level 2 starter area pokemons all the way to the Elite Four, or the reason I also like to play rpgs that have skill tree progressions. Of course I also enjoy strategical varied maps, and I love challenges. I've always played each FE on their hardest classic difficulties - I just like the joy of doing so with a team I feel personally responsible for the strength of. This is more difficult to do with Engage, because all of my favourite, and strongest, units I get quite late. This means for the first half of the game, I'm exclusively using units I know that I'm going to bench for the final map, and it makes me feel like I'm wasting the potential exp and that there's no point in putting that much effort into each unit. With Emblems as well, I feel this also hurts my replayability because it makes the units feel much more similar between playthroughs, whereas the benefit to replaying for me is trying out completely different teams/builds. With 3H I get to pick my end game units very early on, focus on them, and then when I replay use entirely different units from the very beginning. Of course I wish 3H's maps were a bit more interesting, and I wish there was a greater challenge than maddening for NG+ mode to really force you to take advantage of the NG+ mechanics, and there are aspects of Engage I like more (like the no-RNG option for level-ups, and how AI won't attack with a 0% to hit, and I do really love the emblem abilities even if I think it hurts replayability personally for me). I also understand that this very mechanic is the thing a lot of people hate about 3H, as it makes it very unforgiving to ironman.

Again, I absolutely get why people on this sub often prefer Engage's gameplay. I saw a comment the other day who hopes that all Fire Emblem is, like the 3H Ashen wolves dlc, maps with 0% customisability on characters/items so that you have an incentive to use your consumable items and focus solely on the strategy. A really popular challenge a lot of people do is the 0% growth challenge on emulators. Not everyone plays FE in the same way. I just wanted to remind some people that it isn't always 'play 3H if you prefer story, play Engage for better gameplay' for everyone.